As Capital Metro (CapMetro) celebrates 35 years of service this year, it reached another major milestone: one billion rides.
This month, one of CapMetro’s customers got on board the bus and took what was CapMetro’s one billionth trip since its formation in 1985. A lot has changed since then. When CapMetro launched, it received about 225 buses from the city of Austin, Texas. Today, there are more than 540 vehicles out on the streets and rails. In CapMetro’s first full year of operation, it provided about 7.75 million rides. That number has grown to more than 31 million rides in 2019.
CapMetro says ridership has been on the rise for the past year and a half. By taking transit, the one billion customers have avoided adding the more than 445,000 tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that otherwise would’ve resulted if they’d driven alone in their cars. So, each additional rider who gets on a bus or train adds to CapMetro’s contribution to the battle against climate change. And, when Project Connect’s vision of an entire fleet of zero-emissions vehicles becomes a reality, that will increase exponentially.
